Fluther: What's the best (free) software to convert a DVD into a ...

What's the best (free) software to convert a DVD into a set of mpeg files?

Asked by mattbrowne (31732

) January 5th, 2012
11 responses
“Great Question” (2

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I’m planning nothing illegal here. Recently my parents had our old super 8 films from the 60s and early 70s converted to DVDs. They are not copy protected. I’d like to archive them long term on external hard drives as a set of mpeg files. What’s the best way to do this?

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Topics: software, DVD, video, conversion, MPEG, Super 8

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Answers

There are several, but the one I like best is Freemake

www.freemake.com

Download the Video Converter. Very easy. Freeware.

elbanditoroso (33172

)“Great Answer” (1

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Recommend going to .avi vs mpeg.

Another one I have used (a couple years ago) is Gordian Knot

http://sourceforge.net/projects/gordianknot/

Charles (4823

)“Great Answer” (1

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Why AVI, @city_data_forum ? I don’t trust Microsoft. Mpeg is an open standard supported by ISO.

mattbrowne (31732

)“Great Answer” (0

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avi only because it seems most video “out there” is avi. There must be a reason. Otherwise, I don’t know why. Most video converters seem to default or prefer some sort of avi.

Charles (4823

)“Great Answer” (1

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How well do mpeg or avi capture the information in a dvd?

I’ve been converting old video8 home video to digital format. It’s a project that has been going on for years. I was using a dvr/dvd r/w machine to do it until that machine broke. It did a good job, except it stopped being able to write dvds and so some of the dvds are unreadable. I then found another machine which was somewhat experimental. It put the data into mp4 format, I think, which saved a lot of space, but it had horrible problems synching the sound and video.

I recently bought a video capture device which comes with some software that will save in mpeg, but the quality is somewhat grainy and the size of the files is about 4 gb per hour, as compared to mp4 which seems to be about one-eight that size.

I’m doing my capturing because the video camera is old and I want to copy my movies before it breaks. It’s a sony, though, so it seems to be going strong.

But I’d love to capture with the quality the dvd did originally, if possible.

wundayatta (58722

)“Great Answer” (1

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Avi is a container that can contain tons of different formats. Here is a example of a avi containing MPEG4 video and a mp3 soundtrack. AVI isn’t a codec.

jrpowell (40562

)“Great Answer” (1

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